landing

Warthog Dissection

We started by carrying the old warthog to the dissection site, where we promptly hung the pig from the tendons in its legs to a couple of hooks on a tree to give us a safe stable carcass to work with.

Tommy sliced the neck with a very sharp knife, he then offered to one of us to twist the head off of the body, which Ben eagerly volunteered for the job, this made a sharp crunch, followed by a chorus of squeals from the girls in our group.

We moved on to skinning the animal, Tommy carefully cut around the elbows and knees, before allowing us to peel the skin and fatty layer away from the main body, so once we had skinned the animal it looked like the carcass was wearing socks!

The body was cut from the groin down to the neck, allowing to internal organs to be removed from the body and onto the table, the head was already resting on the table being prodded and poked occassionally by the boys. By now you could see where the smell was spreading throughout the crowd due to the faces being pulled.

With the organs now spread on the table we had a clear view of the bloated intestines, also the lungs, which Harriot swiftly volunteered for the chance to blow into the lungs, which expanded to an astonishing size. Tommy then gave us the knives and the organs and the head which we were able to dissect and investigate as we wished. While some of us cut up the stomach some other internal organs, Ben and I cut at the head of the pig to find the brain which was slightly mashed due the being shot in the head. I also then spent a while trying to cut out an eye. Once we had the eye detached from the head, and pinned to the table Tommy kindly cut the pupil of the eye, where gooey insides oozed out. After this some of us left to remains of the animal to dig the grave for the remains, to finish we buried the remains of the wart hog.